386 THE RAJAH'S CHILDREN. 



Unutterable melancholy feelings succeed to this some- 

 what pleasurable period of excitement, but a soft languor 

 steals shortly across the senses, and the half-poisoned 

 individual falls asleep. The next day there is great nausea 

 and sickness of stomach, headache, and tormenting 

 thirst, which makes you curse Opium, and exclaim with 

 Shakespeare's King John : 



" And none of you will bid the winter come 

 To thrust his icy fingers in my maw : 

 Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course 

 Thro' my burnt bosom ; nor intreat the North 

 To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips, 

 And comfort me with cold." 



At the residence of the Ex-Rajah of Singapore, I was 

 introduced to a young Prince and Princess, children, as 

 as I was informed, of the Rajah, and likewise to their 

 mother. These scions of departed royalty were perfectly 

 naked, and adorned with silver ornaments; the boy 

 wearing an amulet about his neck, and rings on his arms 

 and legs ; and the girl having an ornamented silver heart- 

 shaped fig-leaf depending in front, and attached by a 

 silver chain around the hips. They were both very 

 pretty children, and good-tempered ; but I observed that 

 young as he was, perhaps not more than five years old, 

 this small brown prince had commenced the habit of 

 chewing the betel-nut and sirih leaf; for his lips and teeth 

 were already stained with the universal masticatory. 



In an excursion with Sir Edward Belcher and Dr. Oxley 

 into the interior of the island, for the purpose of collecting 

 some of the numerous and beautiful epiphytic Orchids 

 that abound in the forest, I noticed a very novel and 



